VoiceCon Orlando: Seven Questions About Unified Communications
Mar. 26th, 2009 by The VAR Guy
When The VAR Guy descends April 1 on VoiceCon Orlando 2009, he’ll meet multiple unified communications (UC) thought leaders. Our resident blogger has plenty of questions, and he’ll be seeking answers during meetings with Avaya, Cisco Systems, IBM and Siemens Enterprise Communications. Here are the top 7 questions The VAR Guy will be asking.
Take a look…
7. Avaya’s Media Phone: Introduced in early March 2009, the Avaya 9670G media phone claims to be a cross between a telephone and a PC. Cool. But does it work? And how is Avaya preparing partners to promote media phones?
6. Where’s Small Business VoIP Heading Next?: The VAR Guy yesterday had a lengthy conversation with Erick Lagerway, founder of SMBphone — a Canadian firm that combines Microsoft ResponsePoint (a small business phone system) with managed VoIP services. Our resident blogger will share more about SMBphone a bit later. But let’s just say the chat with Lagerway opened The VAR Guy’s eyes and ears to some key VoIP trends for VARs and service providers.
5. Siemens Enterprise Communications – the Real Deal?: The VAR Guy must concede, he hasn’t covered Siemens much. But this blog entry, over on UCStrategies.com, provides a pretty comprehensive look at Siemens’ UC initiatives. Sure, the blog entry spends considerable time praising Siemens. VoiceCon will provide a reality check on that work.
4. Big Blue – The Switzerland of Unified Communications?: IBM has UC partnerships with most of the key players — from Cisco Systems to Microsoft. The VAR Guy will be sure to ask IBM Lotus Software General Manager Bob Picciano where Big Blue intends to cooperate — and compete — in the UC market over the long haul.
3. Where’s Open Source, Asterisk?: The VAR Guy couldn’t help but notice Digium keeping a low profile at the event. Sure, the open source IP PBX provider is scheduled to have a booth at the event. The VAR Guy didn’t spot any sessions dedicated to Asterisk or open source PBXes. Will open source have any type of presence at the show?
2. UC Times Two: First came unified communications. Now, Cisco Systems has launched a unified computing system. How do the two fit together? What’s real today and what’s on the horizon?
1. The Microsoft – Nortel Networks Relationship: By all accounts, Microsoft’s unified communications strategy continues to march forward. And the company is documenting some big customer wins and ROI (return on investment) results within deployments at Intel and Sprint, among others. With all that in mind, does Microsoft need to keep promoting its relationship with Nortel? Or has the couple’s UC romance cooled off?
That’s all for now. The VAR Guy’s own VoIP line is ringing.
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VoiceCon seems mostly enterprise-focused to me, and large buyers of IT are hurting. Apart from ‘additive’ systems (like an Exchange shop adding OCS) it’s hard to see spending on UC growing rapidly, apart from direct cost-saving measures like basic video conferencing instead of travel.
For SMB, unified communications is still utterly confusing.
My big question for VoiceCon is ‘can anyone define unified communications?’ (I already know the answer: ‘no, because every vendor promotes a different definition, and users are totally confused’). But it’s worth asking.
The term UC is used today in such a wide variety of ways that it is almost so vague as to be meaningless marketingese — ‘agile IT’, ‘the connected enterprise’ etc etc
I tried to clarify 4 flavors of UC in a blog entry here: http://blog.unison.com/2008/12/15/what-does-unified-communications-mean/
I’m afraid Cisco’s ‘unified computing’ will confuse things even more.
Rurik: Yes, defining Unified Communications is quite a headache. The VAR Guy keeps it simple: UC = VoIP + corporate software applications. Examples like call center, CRM, mobile sales force, presence, etc.
Will Unison be at VoiceCon? Keep The VAR Guy posted on your travels.
Best,
- TVG
Unison is not planning a booth, although some of out business development team will be there.
I am intrigued by your definition: by ‘corporate software apps’ do you include email, IM, fax?
To me, the essence of UC is minimizing end user effort and confusion in managing communications — by removing the artificial ring fences that IT has unserendipitously put up over the last 20 years.
The preconditions are in place:
- telephone calls go over IP
- mobile carriers are submitting to IT control (ie smartphone platforms like Windows/Android are being imposed on carriers, rather than vice versa)
- data carriers are dumb pipes, and support voice/video/data comfortably
- desktop PCs and mobile devices are powerful enough to run UC
IT people (and VARs) are holding all the right cards — they just need to make it happen.
Yes, we are at VoiceCon and will have some exciting news as well as demonstrating Switchvox SMB 4.0, the web-aware award winning IP PBX. There is also an open source session Tuesday 3/31 at 4 PM that will address open source that according to VoiceCon officials, will be moderated by John Malone from Eastern Management Systems, the research company that created the recent report containing open source market numbers. They published the results on No Jitter’s blog and on their own web site telling the readers that in 2008 18% of all IP lines were open source, over 85% were Asterisk and approx 60% were Digium. We are quite alive and well thank you! Steve Sokol, product manager will attend this session to represent Digium.
I will be presenting at the same time in the ScanSource/Audiocodes presentation theater on “Open Source Asterisk in a Down Economy”
…Bill Miller
VP, Product Management
Digium